That Time of the Month
by darkbloodylegs
Summary: How Tonks and Lupin dealt with the transformations while in hiding.


That Time of the Month

_Oh dear_, sighed the young, pink-haired newlywed as she peered over the edge of her reading glasses at the tiny calendar in her battered wallet. _The full moon again._ Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard a loud clanging and the unmistakable sound of shattering glass from the room next door. Oh not AGAIN… placing her palm on the barely noticeable bump of her once-flat belly, she hurried into the bedroom she shared with her husband.

Remus Lupin lay sprawled on the wooden bedroom floor with the remains of a vase scattered around his body; apparently he had knocked into the nightstand where the vase had sat and Humpty Dumpty had had his great fall. "Sweetheart, are you alright?" using the elastic band on her wrist, she tied up her hair into a ponytail before squatting by her fella's side.

"Tonks, you shouldn't be bending and stretching in your condition," he warned sternly. She laughed bitterly as she began examining the small scratches on his hands from the broken flower container.

"You've told me that every day for three months and every day I tell you the same thing; I am pregnant, not dying."

The old-fashioned gentleman felt his scarred cheeks color from the mention of the 'p' word and he coughed a bit to hide his embarrassment. "Yes, well…" he noticed she had pulled her wand out from her striped sock and had pointed the tip at the shining shards.

"Darling, you'd better let me-", it was too late.

"Repairo!" pale pink flames shot from the tip of her wand, illuminating the confidence on her face quickly melting into shame. "Darnit…"

The rose-scented fire licked at Remus's patched clothes and he scrambled to his feet to avoid the pyre of flickering vase shards. Within seconds, the flame and heat was gone, and the shards were replaced with multiple piles of fuscia sand. The young lady heaved a groan and covered her eyes with her palms and her skin glowed a momentary electric blue before fading back to her normal paler-than-cream color. "Oh, Remus! I can't do this. They should've just marked me as a Squib when I was still in school and had done with it."

Heaving himself to his feet, Remus silently pulled the wand from her slackened grip, muttered a quiet cleaning spell to rid the floor of the sand, and turned to his very hormonal wife. "Tonks, you're not a squib. You're just…" here he struggled for the right words "magically challenged."

The look she shot him made him wish he hadn't bothered. "That was my wedding gift from my mother! And what do I do just four months after the wedding? I ruin it, of course."

Remus considered mentioning that he, not she, was responsible for the original vase shattering, but decided that he didn't want to risk an onslaught of pregnant-woman rage. Instead, he gently squeezed the back of her neck, a spot on her body that tended to carry tension and on which regular massaging staved off headaches. "Come on, Tonks. I'll heat you up some soup." This caught her attention. "Food?" she beamed. Remus smiled.

After the third bowl of leftover bean-and-bacon soup with some stale bread dunked to softness, Tonks was feeling considerably better.

"Remus, are you feeling alright?" She had noticed that just before every full moon he became a lot more physically unstable, although mentally he remained her rock, her steady, trustworthy Lupin. This unstableness must have been what accounted for the broken vase. He sighed.

"You know how it is. But I do wish Severus was one of 'the good guys'. I miss the wolfsbane potion." A silence settled; if Severus was one of the good guys, Dumbledore would be alive. If Dumbledore was alive, they wouldn't have to be in hiding in this crummy little hut day after day, never seeing their loved ones, forever worrying if Harry was still alive.

Tonks patted her husband's hand. "We all wish that." To break the beginnings of the awkward tension that filled the room, she stood from the remains of the kitchen chair. "We'd better get ready."

"Already? It's only-" he consulted the kitchen wall clock. "-only three forty in the afternoon."

"Yes, but it's getting dark so early- we don't want to be unprepared for the first full moon of November."

Here the older werewolf looked at his younger Metamorphmagus wife with a new respect. Cupping her small, heart-shaped face in his comparatively huge palm, he tipped her chin back until they were eye-to-eye.

"What would I do without you?" he quietly marveled. Tonks's breath caught; her husband was still semi-reluctant to show much affection; even after so much isolated time together he felt so much guilt after 'ruining her life' because of the large age (not to mention species and class) difference. Despite her not-so-subtle attempts, more often than not he was stressing too much over whether he should have married and impregnated the perfectly willing woman to provide her with the attention she craved.

Her eyes closed and she parted her mouth, looking a little like a hungry infant bird in a nest, and Remus stifled a chuckle. Pressing his rather dry lips to hers, he was amused to see through the slits of his eyes that her hair started swirling multiple bright colors in her happiness. Clutching the fabric of his frayed shirt, she tipped her head back even farther, lewdly opening her mouth. Subtlety was never her strong suit. Unable to help himself, he laughed loudly into her mouth and she broke away, giving him a dark glare.

Without a word, she got up and stormed into their bathroom, which, of course, had faulty plumbing at the best of times, clogging and pipe explosions at the worst. Clutching at her belly, she eyed herself critically in the mirror before, cursing her pregnant woman's bladder, plunked herself down on the toilet for the third time that hour.

Remus, knowing his wife was extremely hormonal, realized that she would not want to 'talk it out' and would probably prefer to be left alone for the time being although he did feel bad about hurting her feelings. So instead, he began working on what they had had to do every month since Severus had shown his treacherous true colors: he protected his beloved from himself.

They had set aside a closet in the house that they referred to as "The Howling Zone'. Lined with steel bars enforcing the rather weak wooden walls, the tiny (too tiny, really- his human body barely fit in there at all without stooping and his wolf body was literally squeezed to the point of breathlessness, but if Harry could live in a cupboard for eleven years, then Remus could certainly manage a few times a month) as well as several well-placed spells that kept the closet intact through even the worst a seven-foot-two, three-hundred-pound canine could inflict. The room also had a simple silencing charm on it so that all his howling and thumping would not disturb or

Lupin dearly missed wolfsbane- he missed how, just by drinking the foul-tasting stuff he could keep his human mind and not be a danger to anybody. Without it, each full moon would take away his mind and emotions, make him so vicious he would happily rip apart his wife and unborn child into blood-soaked chunks for the gleeful thrill of it.

Remus threw several slabs of dragon steak (courtesy of Hagrid) into the confinement of his cell with the futile hope that it would appease his appetite, then began wrapping magic-enforced strips of cloth over his hands and feet, hoping to minimize the damage he inflicted upon himself- with only his 'magically challenged' wife as his companion, he had little hope if he seriously damaged his body in his temporary absence of sanity.

Feeling a tingle in his abdomen, a sort of butterflies-in-the-stomach-on-steroids, he winced. Tonks was right; it was starting early tonight. "_Ugh!" _He was doubled over for a moment when a stronger ripple shook through his stomach; he felt it in every blood vessel, every tissue, it coursed through his intestines. A light sheen of sweat broke over his body and he began the familiar trembling. He checked his watch; four forty-six.

Tonks, hearing his muffled cries, quickly dried her hands and waddled from the bathroom, her anger forgotten. "Oh, sweetheart," she groaned in sympathy when she saw his pained face. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into an almost maternal embrace. Reluctantly, he pushed away as gently yet firmly as possible.  
"It's not safe to touch me right no-_ow._" The last syllable was interrupted by another, stronger spasm and Remus felt liquid heat sear the inside of his veins. Without another word he stripped his shirt off, followed by his pants and boxers. His suddenly clumsy fingers fumbled at his wristwatch, and Tonks tenderly removed it for him.  
"Your ring, too, sweetheart," she pointed at his wedding band visible through the cloth covering on his hand which had come loose, sliding it off of his fourth finger and placing it into the pocket of her skirt. Lupin felt more naked without the band then he did without the rest of his clothing.

The next spasm sent him onto his knees and he felt the unmistakable, nauseating grind of bone on bone. He shivered and felt the afternoon's soup, thick with stomach acid, threaten to make a reappearance. Quickly, his darling wife tightened the coverings on his hands and feet with an expert's hand, before hauling the quaking man to his full height. _'She really is amazing,' _marveled Lupin, feeling a surge of love for the tiny woman supporting his huge frame. And it certainly _was _huge- growing larger by the second, in fact.

"Nymph, you'd better le-_et gooo" _the last part was more growl than word. Not many people were able to call Mrs. Nymphodora Tonks Lupin by 'Nymph' and _certainly _not by her full first name and live to tell the tale, but she was much too distracted by the prickly gray hairs just beginning to spawn on her husband's naked body to rebuke him. She swore, pressed an automatic kiss to his temple, resisted the shudder she felt building up when she felt more bones shift under her arms, and let go of the man. Hurrying into his cell, his yellow eyes bored once more into his wife's blue ones and she stared, transfixed, until the look of love in their depths was replaced by a look of vague hunger, and Tonks realized this creature was no longer her husband. Slamming the door shut, she heard the mournful song of a distressed, eerie howl before the Silencing Charm took full effect. This time she really did shudder.

To Nymphodora's credit; she did not cry. She had cried the first few times she was involved in his transformations, not out of fear of _him, _no, no matter how many times he claimed he was a deadly monster, she could never fear _him. _As she curled up on their creaky mattress, she felt the tears threaten to fall past her eyelashes but she held them in. _No more tears, _she chided herself. _I'm lucky to even be alive and have a place to stay. Many people don't have that luxury these days._ But she still felt them in the back of her throat. It was a very shaking thing, after all, to watch the eyes of the one you love the most cloud with hatred and hunger at the sight of you. But as long as he was there, as long as, when morning came he would emerge, bleeding and exhausted from his chamber, Tonks would be alright. They would live together, reproduce together, love together.

They would even

die

together.


End file.
